Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T07:58:09.170Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

MIDDLE PASSAGES OF THE SOUTHWEST INDIAN OCEAN: A CENTURY OF FORCED IMMIGRATION FROM AFRICA TO THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 May 2014

Patrick Harries
Patrick Harries*
Affiliation:
University of Basel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Forced immigration from the Southwest Indian Ocean marked life at the Cape of Good Hope for over a century. Winds, currents, and shipping linked the two regions, as did a common international currency, and complementary seasons and crops. The Cape's role as a refreshment station for French, Portuguese, American, and Spanish slave ships proved particularly important in the development of a commerce linking East Africa, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes with the Americas. This slave trade resulted in the landing at the Cape of perhaps as many as 40,000 forced immigrants from tropical Africa and Madagascar. Brought to the Cape as slaves, or freed slaves subjected to strict periods of apprenticeship, these individuals were marked by the experience of a brutal transhipment that bears comparison with the trans-Atlantic Middle Passage. The history of the Middle Passage occupies a central place in the study of slavery in the Americas and plays a vital role in the way many people today situate themselves socially and politically. Yet, for various reasons, this emotive subject is absent from historical discussions of life at the Cape. This article brings it into the history of slavery in the region. By focusing on the long history of this forced immigration, the article also serves to underline the importance of the Cape to the political and economic life of the Southwest Indian Ocean.

Keywords

Southern AfricaAfrican diasporaslave tradeviolence
Type
Special Feature: Africa and the Indian Ocean
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 55 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 173 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I want to thank Michael Aeby for his help with this article. Author's email: patrick.harries@unibas.ch

References

1 Behrendt, S. D., ‘Ecology, seasonality, and the transatlantic slave trade’, in Bailyn, B. and Denault, P. L. (eds.), Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830 (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 45–6Google Scholar.

2 Capela, J., ‘A captura de escravos no sudoeste Africano para o tráfico a longa distância’, Africana Studia, 14 (2010), 42Google Scholar.

3 Schoeman, K., Portrait of a Slave Society: The Cape of Good Hope, 1717–1795 (Pretoria, 2012), 156–70 and 294–305Google Scholar; Westra, P. and Armstrong, J. (eds.), Slave Trade with Madagascar: The Journals of the Cape Slaver Leijdsman, 1715 (Cape Town, 2006)Google Scholar; Sleigh, D. and Westra, P., The Taking of the Slaver Meermin, 1766 (Cape Town, 2013)Google Scholar.

4 Worden, N., ‘VOC Cape Town as an Indian Ocean port’, in Ray, H. P. and Alpers, E. A. (eds.), Cross Currents and Community Networks: The History of the Indian Ocean World (New York, 2007), 145Google Scholar; Emmer, P., The Dutch Slave Trade: 1500–1850, trans. Emery, C. (Oxford, 2006), ixGoogle Scholar.

5 Armstrong, J. and Worden, N., ‘The slaves, 1652–1834’, in Elphick, R. and Giliomee, H., (eds.), The Shaping of South African Society (Cape Town, 1989), 112Google Scholar; Ward, K., Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company (Cambridge, 2009)Google Scholar, 146 and 151.

6 Ross, R., ‘The Dutch on the Swahili coast: 1776–1778: two slaving journals, part I’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 19:2 (1986), 305–360CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P., The French at Kilwa Island: An Episode in Eighteenth-Century East African History (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar 7, 13, and 19–21; Duminy, A., François Renier Duminy: French Mariner and South African Pioneer, 1747–1811 (Pretoria, 2005), 56–8Google Scholar.

7 Worden, N., ‘Ethnic diversity at the VOC Cape’, in van de Geijn-Verhoeven, M.et al., Domestic Interiors at the Cape and in Batavia, 1602–1795 (The Hague, 2002), 131Google Scholar; Hooper, J. and Eltis, D., ‘The Indian Ocean in transatlantic slavery’, Slavery and Abolition, 34:3 (2013), 365CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 A notable exception is Worden, N., ‘Slavery and amnesia: towards a recovery of Malagasy heritage representations of Cape Slavery’ Actes du Colloque International sur l'Esclavage, Antananarivo, 24–28 Septembre 1996 (Antananarivo, 1997), 53–63Google Scholar.

9 Kaarsholm, P., ‘Diaspora or transnational citizens? Indian Ocean networks and changing multiculturalisms in South Africa’, Social Dynamics, 38:3 (2012), 457–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jappie, S., ‘From the madrasah to the museum: the social life of the “kietaabs” of Cape Town’, History in Africa, 38:1 (2011), 388–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also footnote 74; and Worden, N., ‘The changing politics of slave heritage in the Western Cape, South Africa’, The Journal of African History, 50:1 (2009), 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gqola, P. D., What is Slavery to Me? Postcolonial/Slave Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Johannesburg, 2010)Google Scholar.

10 Adhikari, M., ‘From narratives of miscegenation to post-modernist re-imaginging: towards a historiography of coloured identity in South Africa’, in Adhikari, (ed.), Burdened by Race: Coloured Identities in Southern Africa (Cape Town, 2009), 11–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eichmann, A., ‘The heritage of slavery and nation building: a comparison of South Africa and Mauritius’, in Hamilton, D., Hodgson, K., and Quirk, J. (eds.), Slavery, Memory and Identity: National Representations and Global Legacies (London, 2012), 63–76Google Scholar.

11 Diedrich, M., Gates, H. L. Jr., and Pedersen, C. (eds.), Black Imagination and the Middle Passage (New York, 1999), 6Google Scholar.

12 Stuckey, S., Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York, 2013 [orig. pub. 1987])CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 1. See also Morrison's, Toni influential novel, Beloved: A Novel (New York, 2004 [orig. pub. 1987])Google Scholar.

13 Rediker, M., The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York, 2007), 12Google Scholar; Walvin, J., The Trader, the Owner, the Slave: Parallel Lives in the Age of Slavery (London, 2007), 73–4Google Scholar; Smallwood, S., Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 101–52Google Scholar.

14 Allen, R. B., ‘The constant demand of the French: the Mascarene slave trade and the worlds of the Indian Ocean and Atlantic during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, The Journal of African History, 49:1 (2008), 66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Vernet, T., ‘La première traite française à Zanzibar: le journal de bord du vaisseau l'Espérance, 1774–1775’, in Radimilahy, C., Rajaonarimanana, N. (eds.), Civilisations des mondes insulaires: Madagascar, iles du canal de Mozabique, Mascareignes Polynésie, Guyanes (Paris, 2011), 487–8Google Scholar; Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (STDB), Voyage Identification number (VIN) 32982, (http://slavevoyages.org), accessed 22 April 2014.

16 Stein, R. L., The French Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century: An Old Regime Business (Madison, WI, 1979), 40–2Google Scholar.

17 Exceptions are Schoeman, Portrait of a Slave Society, 163–5, 167–9; Sleigh and Westra, Taking of the Slaver Meermin, 26–9; and Duminy, François Renier Duminy, 68–9.

18 Freeman-Grenville, French at Kilwa, 19; Saugera, E., Bordeaux, port négrier: chronologie, économie, idéologie, XVIIe–XIXe siècles (Paris, 1995)Google Scholar, 355.

19 Moufflet, E., ‘Voyage d'un navire négrier (1787–1788)’, Revue maritime et colonial, 7 (1892), 251–3Google Scholar and 259.

20 Ibid. 256–8.

21 Ibid. 267–72 and 275–7.

22 Ibid. 270–1 and 275–6.

23 Debien, G., ‘Le voyage d'un navire négrier bordelais au Mozambique (1787–1788)’, in Cadilhon, F. (ed.), La France d'ancien régime: textes et documents, 1484–1789 (Bordeaux, 2003), 232–3Google Scholar.

24 Five of the 395 slaves died during the Middle Passage. Moufflet, ‘Voyage’, 276.

25 Hubert, F. et al. , Bordeaux au XVIIIe siècle: Le commerce atlantique et l'esclavage (Bordeaux, 2010), 98Google Scholar; Saugera, Bordeaux, port négrier, 358.

26 National Archive, the Netherlands, Scheeps Rolle, 1.04.02, shipping lists for 1779–89, inventory numbers 4324–36. My thanks to Annie Goodner for compiling this list. STDB, (http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1770&yearTo=1793&mjbyptimp=60820), accessed 22 March 2014.

27 Alpers, E., ‘Becoming “Mozambique”: diaspora and identity in Mauritius’, in Alpers, E. and Teelock, V. (eds.), History, Memory and Identity (Port Louis, Mauritius, 2001), 135Google Scholar.

28 Capela, J., O tráfico de escravos nos portos de Moçambique: 1733–1904 (Lisbon, 2002), 311Google Scholar; Saugera, Bordeaux, port négrier, 110; STDB, (http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1789&yearTo=1790&mjbyptimp=60800), accessed 26 March 2014.

29 STDB, Helvétie VIN 33082 and S. Pedro VIN 41320, (http://slavevoyages.org/tast/database/search.faces?yearFrom=1770&yearTo=1793&mjbyptimp=60820), accessed 22 April 2014.

30 Ross, R., ‘The last years of the slave trade to the Cape Colony’, Slavery and Abolition, 9:3 (1988), 209–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Antunes, L., ‘O comércio com o Brasil e a comunidade mercantil em Moçambique (séc. XVIII)’, Dimensões: Revista da Historia de Ufes, 19 (2007), 207–20Google Scholar; Machado, P., ‘A forgotten corner of the Indian Ocean: Gujarati merchants, Portuguese India and the Mozambique slave trade, c.1730–1830’, Slavery and Abolition, 24:2 (2003), 17–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See Cape Town Gazette (CTG), 1:27, 14 February 1801; CTG, 1:29, 8 May 1802. For the earlier period, see Allen, ‘Constant demand’, 61; and Freeman-Grenville, French at Kilwa, 93.

32 Capela, Tráfico de escravos, 79; Tardieu, J.-P., La traite des Noirs entre l'océan Indien et Montevideo (Uruguay): Fin du XVIIIe siècle et début du XIXe (Paris, 2010)Google Scholar, 10, 20, 55, 67, and 87; Borucki, A., ‘The slave trade to the Río de la Plata, 1777–1812: trans-imperial networks and Atlantic warfare’, Colonial Latin American Review, 20:1 (2011), 95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Kaapsche Courant, 5 Nov. 1803, 28 April 1804, 16 Feb. and 1 Nov. 1805; Styles, M. H., Captain Hogan: Sailor, Merchant, Diplomat on Six Continents (Fairfax Station VA, 2003), 167–8Google Scholar.

34 M. C. Reidy, ‘The admission of slaves and “prize slaves” into the Cape Colony, 1797–1818’ (unpublished MA thesis, University of Cape Town, 1997), 5–6; Ross, ‘Last years’, 216.

35 Shell, R. (ed.), ‘“Slaves”: an essay by Samuel Eusebius Hudson’, Kronos, 9 (1984), 41Google Scholar.

36 Harries, P., ‘Negotiating abolition: Cape Town and the trans-Atlantic slave trade’, Slavery and Abolition, 34:4 (2013), 579–597CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Capela, Tráfico de escravos, 232; Alpers, E., Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (London, 1975), 201–2Google Scholar and 229.

38 Colin, E., ‘Notice sur Mozambique’, in Malte-Brun (ed.), Annales des voyages, de la géographie et de l'histoire 9 (1809), 312–15Google Scholar.

39 Colin, ‘Notice sur Mozambique’, 320.

40 Capela, Tráfico de escravos 17–18; Newitt, M., A History of Mozambique (London, 1995), 252Google Scholar.

41 Isaacman, A. and Isaacman, B., Slavery and Beyond: The Making of Men and Chikunda Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750–1920 (Portsmouth, NH, 2004), 39–82Google Scholar; Capela, Tráfico de escravos, 247–8; Mathews, T. I., ‘Portuguese, Chikunda, and peoples of the Gwembe Valley: the impact of the “lower Zambezi complex” on southern Zambia’, The Journal of African History, 22:1 (1981), 23–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Vail, L. and White, L., Capitalism and Colonialism in Mozambique: A Study of Quelimane District (London, 1980), 26–8Google Scholar.

43 Eltis, D., Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York, 1987), 250–1Google Scholar.

44 B. dos Mártires, ‘Memoria corographica da provincia de Moçambique’, in V. Rau, ‘Aspectos étnico-culturais da Ilha de Moçambique em 1822’, Studia, 11 (1963), 148–51Google Scholar; Capela, ‘A captura de escravos’, 45–6; Alpers, Ivory and Slaves, 211–12 and 229–30.

45 Colin, ‘Notice sur Mozambique’, 324.

46 Ibid. 325–28.

47 The National Archives, London (TNA), Foreign Office (FO) 308/1, 23, 62, 70, 93–5, 316, 369; Cape Almanac (Cape Town), 1816.

48 African Institution Report (1818), 27; Buxton, T. F., The African Slave Trade (London, 1839), 110Google Scholar.

49 See footnote 47; and the Vice-Admiralty records, TNA High Court of the Admiralty 42/506/1164.

50 The Cape Almanac (1818); STDB, VIN 49786, (http://slavevoyages.org), accessed 22 April 2014.

51 Cape Archives (CA) Colonial Office (CO) 4362, deposition by R. Chrystie, 19 Mar. 1818.

52 Captain José dos Santos Ferreira to Lord Charles Somerset, 26 Feb. 1818, in G. M. Theal (ed.), Records of the Cape Colony (RCC) XI, 461–2; TNA FO 308/2, 233–34, Commissioner A. Marsden to G. Canning, 17 Mar. 1823.

53 TNA FO 308/1/42-43, Commissary judges, Mixed Commission, London, 9 Dec. 1819; CA Government House (GH) 1/23, C. Robinson and R. Gifford, ‘Case of the Paquet Real’, in Colonial Agent to Somerset, 28 Nov. 1818; Somerset to Bathurst 21 May 1818 in Theal (ed.), RCC XII, 7.

54 Colonial Secretary to Collector of Customs 19 May 1818 in Theal (ed.), RCC XII, 5.

55 Larson, P., Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora (New York, 2009), 240Google Scholar.

56 Harries, P., ‘The hobgoblins of the middle passage: the Cape of Good Hope and the trans-Atlantic slave trade’, in Schmieder, U., Fülberg-Stolberg, K., and Zeuske, M. (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa and the Americas: A Comparative Approach (Berlin, 2011), 27–50Google Scholar.

57 Proclamation of 13 Dec. 1839 in Cape of Good Hope Government Gazette, 3 Jan. 1840.

58 TNA FO 84/437, ‘Schedule of male and female negroes on board the Escorpião’, Vice-Admiralty Court, Cape of Good Hope, 24 Feb. 1840; TNA FO 84/385, H. Eyres, commander of HMS Modeste, deposition of 20 Apr. 1841; TNA Admiralty (ADM) 7/617, W. Robson to Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury in Treasury to Captain Eyres, 10 Jan. 1845.

59 TNA FO 84/437, Deposition before Court of Vice-Admiralty, Merrington, 1 Apr. 1840; CA CO 4913, Bell to Field, 13 Mar. 1840.

60 South African Commercial Advertiser (SACA), 1 and 4 Dec. 1841, 140 and 142.

61 Saunders, C. C., ‘Liberated Africans in Cape Colony in the first half of the nineteenth century’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 18:2 (1985), 232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 TNA FO 84/458, HMCs to Earl Aberdeen, 20 Dec. 1843.

63 SACA, 24 and 27 Jan. 1844, 41 and 50.

64 Barnard, F. L., A Three Years’ Cruise in the Mozambique Channel (New York, 1971 [orig. pub. 1848])Google Scholar, 40, 43–4, and 222; Hill, P. G., Fifty Days on Board a Slave-Vessel in the Mozambique Channel, in April and May, 1843 (London, 1844)Google Scholar.

65 Beachey, R. W., The Slave Trade of Eastern Africa (London, 1976), 19Google Scholar.

66 de Froberville, E., ‘Notes sur les Va-Niungue et les Mabsiti: peuples de l'Afrique orientale’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie, 3:10 (1849), 65–81Google Scholar; Newitt, History of Mozambique, 253–5 and 265–6.

67 Anon., Nouvelles annales des voyages, 4 (1840), 250–1.

68 Register of prize Negroes, 24 Oct. 1843–30 Jan. 1847 in CA, Collector of Customs 382.

69 Nouvelles annales des voyages, 4 (1840), 248–9; House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP) 1846, (723) Correspondence of British Commissioners on the Slave Trade, 676–7; Journal of Paymaster Frederic Lucas, HMS Mutine, 6 May–16 June 1845, (http://www.pbenyon.plus.com/RN/Lucas_Journal.html), accessed 15 Sept. 2013. See also Carter, M., Govinden, V., and Peerthum, S., The Last Slaves: Liberated Africans in 19th Century Mauritius (Port Louis, 2003)Google Scholar.

70 HCPP 1865 (3503), Correspondence with British Commissioners at the Cape of Good Hope, 1864, 70.

71 Alpers, E., ‘The other middle passage: the African slave trade in the Indian Ocean’, in Christopher, E., Pybus, C., and Rediker, M. (eds.), Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World (Berkeley, CA, 2007), 24–6Google Scholar; Kaarsholm, ‘Diaspora or transnational citizens?’, 459–62.

72 Nativel, D. and Rajaonah, F. (eds.), Madagascar et l'Afrique: entre identité insulaire et appartenances historiques (Paris, 2007), 24Google Scholar; Alpers, E., ‘Mozambique and “Mozambiques”: slave trade and diaspora on a global scale’, in Zimba, B., Alpers, E., and Isaacman, A. (eds.), Slave Routes and Oral Tradition in Southeastern Africa (Maputo, 2005), 39–61Google Scholar.

73 Harries, P., ‘Making Mozbiekers: history, memory and the African diaspora at the Cape’, in Alpers, Zimba, and Isaacman, (eds.), Slave Routes and Oral Tradition, 120–1Google Scholar.

74 Jeppie, S., ‘Reclassifications: Coloured, Malay, Muslim’, in Erasmus, Z. (ed.), Coloured by History, Shaped by Place: New Perspectives on Coloured Identities in Cape Town (Cape Town, 2001), 80–96Google Scholar; Baderoon, G., ‘The African Oceans – tracing the sea as memory of slavery in South African literature and culture’, Research in African Literatures, 40:4 (2009), 89–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.